World

Indian private airline Indigo bars a woman passenger for wearing an “inappropriate” dress

A woman passenger was stopped before boarding an Indigo flight from Mumbai to Delhi on Monday morning, after the airline's male ground staff found her dress to be “inappropriate”. According to a co-passenger, she boarded the next flight only after changing into trousers.

The woman was a former employee of Indigo and the sister of one of the airlines’ current staffers. Indigo confirmed incident but said that the passenger was travelling under the subsidised “staff leisure travel policy” for employees and their families, which included a dress code.

Purabi Das, who had travelled with the passenger during from Doha to Mumbai, said that the passenger had "missed her flight and was told that she would be allowed to board the next Indigo flight only after she changed into something covering her legs". She further described the incident on Facebook: "A male co-passenger who tried to help her was threatened that he would not be allowed to board his flight if he intervened!”

In an email response to The Indian Express, the company stated: “As per the guidelines outlined, employees and the nominated family members are required to maintain a specific dress code, as and when they fly with the airline under the staff leisure travel privileges. Keeping in mind this policy, the Mumbai ground staff followed the protocol to brief this passenger on the dress code policy.” The low-cost airlines is the biggest and most profitable in India and has just finished a successful IPO.

An Indigo representative told Mashable that the "dress code" did not apply to ordinary passengers but only to those travelling under Indigo’s staff policy. It excludes bathroom slippers, track pants, floaters, shorts and ‘revealing clothes’. The representative clarified that these are meant to be “guidelines” and not compulsory rules that can be used to bar a person from boarding a flight, and added that the staff in question had been taken for further training in "sensitization".

@aparna_jain The code of conduct including dress code applies only to Employees (men & women) & relatives only when they're traveling at >>

The incident comes only a month after another India’s national announced its plan to ground 125 overweight cabin crew members in September. In 2009, it had also sacked 10 air-hostesses on similar grounds.

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